Skip to main content

Poverty of education and opportunity

On the day that the Assembly Government launches its strategy for child poverty, figures were released today regarding the number of NEETS in Wales.

NEETS are those young people who are not in education, employment or training and I first blogged on this phenomenon over two years ago.

The figures are shocking.

In 1999, there were 50,000 NEETS in Wales aged between 16 and 24.

By 2006, this had risen to 55,200, a rise of more than ten per cent.

In the last three years alone, there has been an increase of over 5,000, mainly among 19-24 year olds.

This is despite tens of millions of pounds of Assembly and European funding being spent on this problem.

Something is seriously going wrong with the whole approach to supporting young people within our poorest communities and rather than announcing another strategy, perhaps the politicians and their civil servants could try and explain why the situation is getting worse, and not better, in Wales, and do something constructive about it

Comments

Anonymous said…
it;s all thatcher's fault...oh no, wait, its the party that plaid cymru have sold their soul to....
culture of nihilism, not only in wales but UK
Anonymous said…
oks o plenty of talk where the action and resources to do something about it.
It wouldn't hurt to actually have people in DCELLS who understood what was involved and had hands on experience!!!!!

Popular posts from this blog

THE CRACHACH

Unlike me, do you consider yourself part of 'the establishment' here in Wales?  As thousands gather for the Eisteddfod in Mold this morning, they will, according to some social commentators, not be participating in the greatest cultural festivals of Europe. Instead, they will merely be bit-part players in one of the annual gatherings of the great and good of Wales.  Unkindly, this set of the movers and shakers in Welsh society is known as 'the crachach' , and constitute a social class all of their own, dominating the educational, cultural and media sectors of Wales and allegedly looking down upon any outsider with new ideas, reinforcing mediocrity and failing to see beyond the limits of their own narrow experience.  They are said to live in a comfort zone that awaits the expected invitation to the next glass of chilled chardonnay and canapés, forgetting that due to their lack of leadership and drive, Wales remains firmly rooted to the bottom of the UK prosperity league ...

THE FUTURE FOR SILICON VALLEY

During the last twenty years, there have been many academics, politicians and policymakers (including yours truly) who have looked over to the innovation developed in Silicon Valley, California and wondered if we could ever emulate that success here in Wales. Whilst the former First Minister Rhodri Morgan proposed only last week that South Wales could become the “UK’s answer to Silicon Valley”, he is not alone in the world with such a suggestion for his local area. With imitation often being the sincerest form of flattery, many others regions across the globe have tried to emulate the ‘secret sauce’ that has led to this small valley to the South East of San Francisco becoming the seedbed for world-leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Google. But after fifty years of success, can it maintain its position as the premier location for innovation in the World? This is a question that its own business community has recently been asking itself. This has culminated in a...

MYOPIA AND ENTROPY

Over the next month, this blog will look very carefully at some of the new policies developed as part of the Economic Renewal Programme (ERP) launched by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) last week. Hopefully, it will help to start a debate on whether this is the right approach to turn around the Welsh economy and to drag us from the bottom of the UK’s prosperity league table. I will start by examining the decision to abolish International Business Wales (IBW), the Assembly’s overseas investment arm that was responsible for attracting business into Wales as well as promoting Welsh business abroad. Some will say that this decision to close down the last remnant of the old Welsh Development Agency was justified by the outcomes of last October’s review of IBW by Glenn Massey, the former inward investment specialist. However, if you bother reading the Massey report in detail, it actually has little evidence to suggest that the division was doing badly. If we examine IBW’s record on new j...